1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to apparatus for bagging loose articles, and more particularly, it pertains to apparatus for filling loose articles, such as apples, into a deformable bag and thereafter gathering the open end of the bag into a small neck and applying a tie thereabout.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the fresh fruit packing industry freshly picked fruit is typically subjected to sorting, grading and bagging operations along a processing line in a packing house. In recent years, more and more of these various fruit processing steps are being accomplished automatically with automatic machinery. Today, there are automatic fruit processing machines in use at nearly every separate fruit handling operation in a commercial fruit packing and processing line.
While automatically operated equipment for weighing or counting fruit into bags has long formed a part of a typical packing house processing line, it has only been relatively recently that automatic machinery has been provided for holding the individual bags open at the bag filling station and thereafter automatically delivering the filled bag to a bag tying machine wherein a wire tie or the like can be applied thereto--such operation being conventionally manually performed in the past. One machine for performing such a bag transferring operation, wherein a filled bag of fruit is moved from the filling station to a bag typing machine, is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,864,894, issued to Charles E. Sheetz et al on Feb. 11, 1975. In the apparatus shown in this patent, loose fruit is delivered into a bag which is being held open by a pair of finger gripping assemblies. The finger gripping assemblies are adjustably secured to a transfer arm which is mounted for swingable movement about a pivot axis located at the base of the apparatus. Upon the completion of the bag filling step, the transfer arm is swung so that the open bag is carried frm the filling station into the throat of the bag typing machine wherein said open end of the bag is gathered together into a constricted neck to which a wire tie is thereafter automatically applied.
One of the problems with the aforedescribed bagging apparatus is that the tie may be applied too high above the fruit in the bag since the tie is applied at the same elevation each time as determined by the expected maximum height which the fruit may take in their stacked arrangement within the bag just prior to the application of the tie. Thus, upon completion of the bagging operation, the fruit will be free to roll around in the bag which makes for poor bag handling conditions during subsequent processing. For example, it is particularly difficult to stack bags of fruit for transportation to the marketplace or for arrangement and display in the marketplace when the fruit is free to shift with relative ease within the loose confines of the bag. Also, loose fruit in the bag presents an unattractive package to the ultimate consumer, and the relatively unimpeded movement of the fruit within the bag may encourage bruising or other damage to the fruit.